Read Carlie Simmons (Book 5): One Final Mission for Free Online Page B

leaning
against the elephant-gray walls of the storage room, and handed her a bottle of
water. Her baby was asleep in her arms. The fourteen survivors were clumped
together amidst boxes of contraband liquor, imported jars of food, and forged
paintings from the Meiji Period. This was a Yakuza hideout that Shiro had used
in the past and its location, two levels below the subway tunnels, rarely saw
even utility workers. After he helped to deliver Nora’s baby, the entire group
had made their way along several miles of dark corridors until they arrived at
the storage room. The past twenty-fours had seen them sleeping, eating, and
discussing potential escape plans while debating what horror had unfolded in
the city and possibly beyond.
    “You look much better today,” he said in
English as he squatted beside her.
    “A few hours of sleep can do wonders. I
don’t remember much of the past day,” she said, taking a drink and then looking
around the twelve-by-twelve cinderblock room. Shiro noticed she had a poorly inked
butterfly tattoo on her neck, partially hidden by the corkscrew curls of her strawberry-blond
hair.
    “Ah, I brought everyone here yesterday
morning after we encountered a few goryo in the tunnel where your baby was
delivered.”
    “Goryo — that’s an interesting term.”
    Shiro nodded but before he could respond,
a woman in her late twenties sitting to Nora’s left muttered something in
Japanese. “Goryo are malicious spirits that return for revenge to dole out
destruction across the land.” The woman shook her head in disgust. “Silly girl — her
baby probably knows more than she does.”
    “I would think the term kitsune or tengu would be more fitting than ‘goryo,’” Nora fired back in perfect Japanese.
    The woman, named Arisu, dipped her chin as
she looked at Nora in shock. Then she stood up with a snort and moved across
the room next to two women who were asleep against some crates.
    Shiro grinned and then looked at Nora.
“Impressive — your dialect has a hint of New York perhaps?”
    “New Jersey actually, but not bad.” She
tucked a loose flap of her shirt around her baby’s neck. “I grew up in Asbury
Park but went to NYU for a dual major in English and Japanese. After college, I
floated around Asia for a while then got a teaching job over here…uhm…going on eight
years now.”
    Shiro looked down at the baby and then
back up at Nora, who seemed content to carry on the conversation. “Oh, the dad,
yeah, he up and left a few months ago. We were going to move in with his
parents in Florida. Then one morning I get up and he’s gone with all of our
money. I was gonna finish out my summer semester of teaching and then maybe head
back to the States. I wasn’t supposed to deliver for another month.”
    He kept nodding, hoping she would pause so
he could politely pull away but she kept gushing out her words. Just like an
American woman—has to tell me her ‘amazing’ life story then will probably fish
around for my opinion of her when she’s done. He wondered how someone as
extroverted as her had survived in so reserved a country as his.Shiro
slumped his shoulders into the wall and folded his hands across his lap,
letting out a sigh as the woman continued in between sips of water, seemingly
as thirsty for conversation as she was for her drink.
    He tuned out her voice as he looked over
the other thirteen survivors. They rarely looked at him except in passing
glances. He knew they resented having their lives in the hands of so lowly a
social figure as a Yakuza though most of the businessmen in the room had
probably, at one time, frequented Yakuza-run houses of easy virtue to spend time with high-priced escorts.
    The nine men ranged in age from eighteen
years to forty-three. Most were reasonably fit but had soft, lotiony hands and
they had tired out quickly the day before after trotting only a short distance
in the tunnels. Three of them had the fighter’s spirit in their eyes and